The Blame Game
As children, we spent a lot of our time in controlled environments, whether in church, at home or at school. As we grew older and went out into the world, often wearing rose-colored glasses of naivete, we were often excited, shocked or dismayed to see and hear things that we did not see and hear as children. We may have found ourselves unprepared.
The rose-colored glasses come off, usually for good. We may become so aware of the things that feel wrong in the world that we focus only on those, and then that becomes all that we see. We want to blame someone for ruining our world. That someone could be a stranger, a co-worker, a neighbor or even someone we love.
According to Dr. Steven Stosny, who developed a ground-breaking therapy for people with anger management issues, vulnerable feelings like sadness, guilt, shame and anxiety create self-doubt and make us feel powerless. Those feelings can be alleviated with adrenaline if we can blame someone, giving us temporary feelings of energy and confidence. We learn we can control other’s behavior by invoking guilt or shame in them. We want others to join in our assignment of guilt and shame on those we blame, creating a “common-enemy bonding”.
Stosny goes on to say that blame makes those who are blamed defensive. When people are defensive, they can’t listen. It also makes the blamer powerless over how they feel. As long as their vulnerable emotions are attributed to others, they are not motivated to make changes in their own behavior. Improvement is sacrificed to the impulse to punish. This takes the focus away from responsibility and finding solutions.
Blame is about past causes of problems. Solutions must be in the present and future. This applies whether we blame an intimate partner or family member leading to domestic violence, or a stranger or group of strangers leading to civil conflict.
Blame comes from the assessment part of the prefrontal cortex, which tries to discern how bad things are and how much damage has been done. Solutions come from the more advanced “improve” part of the prefrontal cortex—making things better. While you’re stuck in how bad things are, you can’t make things better.
Blame comes from the vengeful part of the heart. Most of what we blame on our loved ones must be addressed from the compassion and kindness part of our hearts.
During the Minnesota legislative session and immediately afterwards, our local representatives, both Republican, sent reports to the local papers. They made it a point to blame the Democrats who are in the majority in both the House and the Senate for all the social and financial ills of our time. Rather than recognizing the challenges we all face and working together to find solutions, they assign blame.
It is important to see the other person’s perspective alongside your own and to see yourself through the other’s eyes. When we can stand together in mutual respect and look at the problem as separate, we are in a position, mentally and emotionally, to look for solutions.
